


Be My Friend (Hold Me)

by winterysomnium



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look, if there’s one thing I learned on Gotham’s streets, it’s this: dealing is never fucking pretty, okay? It’s ugly, it <i>gets</i> ugly but <i>that’s</i> how you know that you’re moving forward. It’s like peeling off a band-aid. It sucks, it hurts, it’s sore after. But it gets better.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be My Friend (Hold Me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [varebanos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/varebanos/gifts).



> I lost a bet I made with varebanos. This is her prize.  
> She wanted JayTim and one of the boys comforting the other.  
> Heavily inspired by [this amazing picture](http://naturalvirtue.tumblr.com/post/22252588203) by naturalvirtue.  
> Title is a lyric from the song "Breathe Me" by Sia

The repetitive, low hiccups are too big, too tight for Tim’s  – for _any boy’s_ – shoulders, too huge and somber for any boy who didn’t get to shakily down a shot from a glass dotted with somebody’s else fingertips, for any boy who was never shakily dotted, unsteadily touched by those same fingertips himself; no boy that doesn’t, _couldn’t_ have all the tastes of the world under his tongue, between the rivers of the print of his fingers should ever cave like this, shouldn’t implode with cut off hiccups that knock him, the shock, _both_ of them right back into Jason’s  insides; shouldn’t shake with salty, watery shudders that tie knots along the bony silk of his throat, quakes whose epicenter Jason can’t stabilize and all of this, these dull, forceful sounds, the wet, saturated colours, the bent, curled up placement of his body – for Jason, all of these are foreign concepts on Tim.    

(Because boys like Tim shouldn’t miss the world like _he_ does, like Jason misses afternoon exercises and incredibly soft couches and popcorn with real butter, like he mourns for forever hungry days where every calorie he devoured vanished from the inches of his body, days where the three am coffee’s cheap, homey warmth bought from a stand that never closes felt like a win in the lottery, those days that can’t be felt or held or found anymore. (But that aren’t completely lost, either.) )

Boys like Tim should miss grade school and sunny fieldtrips with ice cream melting into their palms, melting all the way to his kid elbow and with the pink scrubbed patches of skin his Mother would clean with a stiff tissue etched into the summer heat, should miss the tug of the force behind her bones as she drags him to a bathroom, should miss days sticky with sweat and grass stains and truthful smiles, thick like the notebooks filled with newspaper cut-outs Jason found shoved between high school notes, between aged textbooks with doodles and “ _wanna play D &D later?_” at the bottom of the history book Jason remembers owning too, _Modern Chemistry_ made into a herbarium full of papery, square flowers, left to dry with fake, forced joints, curves and patterns of the language of a Tim Jason wasn’t supposed to know, most of the corners dated to years he spent as a ghost, vacant clothes and cold beds, stones that won’t grow and there’s a cut-out of  that too, black on grey and yellow seeping down into the letters, and thinking back, thinking of the whole shelf, thinking of Tim bent and curved the same way all of his notes are: Tim might’ve been more of a ghost after all.

His clothes might’ve been emptier and his bed colder and there wasn’t anything he could grow as, no stone that would ground him, no life of his own he wanted to follow and could Gotham count?

But Gotham’s roofs are wonky, her streets as wobbly as the knees of first time dealers and prostitutes and the fingers of guys getting their cock sucked for a twenty, it wobbles and stumbles and Jason learned to synchronize with all of the quakes, all of them except for Tim’s, for Tim’s never ending patrol nights, runny noses and cough drops that knock against his teeth, dull when he bites down on them typing his life away under the city Jason wishes he loved so selflessly like Tim always has, living under a city Jason wishes he could see as a person too.

He _doesn’t_ but she’s what’s left of Tim’s childhood, she’s what survives and Tim knows places that fell through with the earthquake and through the destruction of people’s lives and sea’s foamy wind, knows places that hid and stood and stayed and once in a while, his step changes.

(Softens to a stop and he crooks his finger and tip toes and drops to one knee, gets rooftop dust in the shapes of a palm and a knee and the tip of his foot pressed to his costume and once in a while Jason helps him clean it up afterwards and if the weather, the crimes, their moments allow it: Jason’s knuckles angle Tim’s face, put his mouth where Jason wants it and – usually, Jason wants it everywhere.)

Usually, Tim looks at him like he doesn’t know who he is, who put him into his own uniform, how he grew up into someone Jason would stand this close to but he swallows and if he can, drags Jason closer and shares his teeth and tongue and mouth, shares movement, shares his fingers and hips and leaves hints between Jason’s jacket and back, on the road next to Jason’s spine, dyes Jason’s hair with his palms.

(Dies where Jason does, too.)            

He kisses the place next to Tim’s vertebrae again, as if it’s a button he has to push every few minutes, as if he’s refreshing a page, waiting for Tim to catch up to the present, catch up to every thought within the universe of him, push out the wasted worlds, focus on stars and wait for him to –

to quiet down.

Tim sniffs quietly, rubs his already damp, already cold sleeves next to the base of his nose again, over the bridge of it and down to the sides of his jaw, scrubs and sags an inch lower, losing his grip on the tension in most of his wired muscles, losing his posture further and after he sniffs again, he murmurs: “I’m sorry,” the words as wet and hoarse as the hems of his shirt, the skin of his face, as the remains of the dried out rivers that resemble the pictures of them on maps, thin and wiry, fast in their stillness, a picture of what’s real.   

“Do you need a tissue?” Says Jason’s mouth and _don’t you dare apologize again_ says the inside of him and when Tim shakes his head, he’s awfully glad. Glad because the tissues aren’t anywhere near them, rooms away and there’s nothing Jason wants to leave for, not when he’s the jar holding the whole of Tim for now, not when he’s the glass Tim poured himself into, not when Tim is finally beginning to solidify, from the shell to the tissue, to the blood and Jason is reluctant to let Tim be drank yet, isn’t going to let Gotham or Bruce or _anyone_ gulp Tim down, to waste him away.

Shifting his weight against Jason’s thighs, lifting from the places he sank into more than thirty minutes ago, Tim asks: “Aren’t your legs falling asleep?” his mouth still partly pressed between his clothed wrists, gaze dropped to the simple lines of the old, weary cotton shirt.

“Nah, my legs are fine. You would know otherwise, they snore,” Jason answers, waits for the thought to attach himself to Tim and  –

Tim snorts, trembles across every degree of Jason’s body and it’s the first tremble Jason likes, it’s the tremble he likes the most.

“But you were on patrol all night.” Tim tugs his sleeves higher up his palms and they nearly reach his knuckles, swallow the top of his thumbs. “I’ll get up in a moment. That’s all I need. Just a moment,” he says and Jason thinks that Tim closes his eyes around the words then, as if he’s remembering them by heart, learning the meaning behind them, obeying as if they are the law of gravity or the laws of motion, as if it’s something inescapable, something he won’t avoid.

(On some days, Jason finds it beautiful. But today, he finds it sad.)

“Did ya know that centuries ago, a moment was considered a unit of time that was ninety seconds long? So don’t rush, baby b. You’ve still got time,” Jason answers, continues. “You’ve got all of my time,” he says, slowly. It’s more accidental than intended but it slips out, it crawls over Tim’s shoulders and makes a nest through his chest and the corner of his eyes stings again, his face heats and occasionally: kindness is as destructive as cruelty.

(Tim implodes, again.)

“I – shouldn’t. I _shouldn’t_ have it. I – I keep wasting it. Like I – did right now.” Tim’s voice feels dry, feels scratched, quiet like autumn leaves, as visible as their tips, their dyed veins and it – it isn’t anything Jason wouldn’t understand. It’s not a concept he wouldn’t get.

(It’s not that foreign to him. But it’s new on Tim.)

“You’re _dealing_. Everyone has to, once in a while. You can’t keep skipping that. It’s not that simple, baby b. But you know all of this shit already. I know you do,” Jason answers and there’s a shake of Tim’s head, there’s Tim trying to somehow curl into himself more, there’s a response Jason doesn’t particularly like.

(And there are a lot of things Jason doesn’t particularly like.

But only a few he can do anything with.)

Tim makes a face that’s half a smile, half amusement but there isn’t anything happy in it, there’s nothing to cherish, nothing to find.

(It’s hollow. It’s plain.)

 “I just got snot all over my shirt. How is that dealing? How does that help _anyone_?” he asks, angrily scrubs the soft skin of his face, leaves it red, redder than it was.

Capturing his arms, Jason squeezes his wrists, forces Tim to focus on the pressure, the change of it, the presence that Jason forms. Forces him to stop hurting himself. “But _that’s_ what dealing is about, Tim.” He puts his chin on Tim’s shoulder and holds him, holds him like he never hold onto anything, onto _anyone_ but Bruce, but his Mom, not anyone but – “Look, if there’s one thing I learned on Gotham’s streets, it’s this: dealing is never fucking pretty, okay? It’s ugly, it _gets_ ugly but _that’s_ how you know that you’re moving forward. It’s like peeling off a band-aid. It sucks, it hurts, it’s sore after. But it gets better.”

“It does?” Tim lifts his head, knocks his jaw into Jason’s but it’s not important, it’s not why they rearrange themselves into each other, why Tim’s heart finds Jason’s pulse, why it listens to everything else but hums with it, it’s not why Tim speaks again. “You can lie to me,” he says, closes his eyes and feels Jason’s breathless relief, Jason’s silky mouth as it moves.

“It does,” Jason lies.

(But it’s a lie Tim needs.)   


End file.
